The September 11 attacks changed NYC, and the world, forever. This week’s episode acknowledges the 25th anniversary of 9/11, as the grief and aftermath still impact many people today. Christine Nicholas, CEO of Nicholas & Lence Communications and former President and CEO of NYC & Company, was at the forefront of efforts to rebuild New York City’s $27 billion tourism industry following 9/11, helping develop the strategic communications campaigns and partnerships that showed the world how resilient New York was. In this powerful episode, Cristyne shares how communications leaders balanced sensitivity with the need to inspire optimism, coordinated messaging across city leadership, and managed intense global media attention.
Transcript
Jenn: Hey, Kalli.
Kalli: Hi, Jenn.
Jenn: So, today’s episode is a little bit of a tough one. And I don’t think in four seasons of our podcast, either one of us has ever opened up the conversation with saying this is a tough one. But today’s is. We are, you and I are both from New York. I know we’ve talked about that on the show before. And we are in 2026, which is the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. I can’t believe it’s already been 25 years. And because of that, we wanted to honor our favorite city in the world by talking a little bit about what happened after 9/11 and how New York City gravitated toward a new chapter. Every single person that was working or living there or had any type of connection there became incredibly resilient. And today’s guest, Cristyne Nicholas, she was actually at the forefront of the 9/11 attacks. She worked at the mayor’s office, and she was really the main pivotal PR person to sort of bring the country back on its feet. So yes, we’re going to talk a little bit about PR and marketing, but this is really going to dive into her experiences on 9/11 and how PR can really navigate brands and people during times of crisis.
Kalli: I mean, I definitely agree with you. I think that this is definitely going to be one of the hardest conversations that we’ll have, but also, I think it’ll be one of the most important. So, looking forward to welcoming Cristyne and just really appreciating that she’s taking the time to kind of go back to that time and take us through what she went through so that we all can learn something from it.
Jenn: Well said. And just for our listeners, a little bit of a trigger warning. We are going to talk about 9/11 and not going to too much detail, but it is a very emotional conversation. So, trigger warning for anybody that is about to listen, that we are going to talk about some sensitive things and experiences from that day. Well, on that note, we thank everybody for tuning in and let’s get to our conversation with Cristyne. 9/11 changed the course of history, not only for New York City, but for the world. And while many lived in shock and despair, the city worked to recover quickly. PR had a helping hand in rebuilding New York to get back on its feet. Today’s guest, Cristyne Nicholas, CEO of Nicholas and Lentz Communications, was at the forefront during September 11, 2001, a date marked in history and led the efforts to rebuild New York City’s 27 billion tourism industry after the devastating attacks. As we observe 25 years since the city witnessed the tragedy of 9/11, we welcome Cristyne today to discuss how strategic communications and resilience shaped New York City’s comeback story. Hi, Cristyne, it’s such an honor to speak with you today.
Cristyne: Very good to be with you. It’s nice to be back in touch with you, Jennifer.
Jenn: Likewise, likewise.
Kalli: Cristyne, it’s very nice to meet you. And as you said, you have a relationship with Jenn, but I would love to just take a little bit of a step back before we dive right in and just really talk about for a second how your career path led you to become the press secretary and director of communications for the New York City Office of the Mayor and then going to the CEO of NYC & Company.
Cristyne: Sure. Well, that was quite a while ago, but back in 1993, I’m a lifelong New Yorker. I was been in Washington doing a stint, not a stint, but starting my career as a congressional press secretary for a member of Congress and then ended up working with the Bush administration or the Bush campaign for re-election in ‘92. But I had left Washington to get my master’s degree at Columbia. So, I was living in New York in 1993 when Rudy Giuliani was running for election for mayor. It was his second time running. He lost his first campaign to Mayor David Dinkins. So, he was running again. And they asked if I would consider being his press secretary because they had seen my work with the Bush campaign because I was based in New York. So I was on TV, I was doing interviews, I was doing press conferences. So, they kind of had a vague familiarity with me. I interviewed, I got the job and I thought, and I was still at school. I still had another semester to go. So, I said, I’m just going to do this campaign and go right back to Columbia. But he won. So, then he invited me to be press secretary in City Hall. And I said, okay, but I can really only do it for maybe six months to get you on your seat. I’ll build on your feet. I will build the press office, but then I’m going to go back to school. And that was the arrangement, but after a year still at City Hall, he promoted me to Director of Communications where I was overseeing all the city agencies, their communications. It was a very exciting time because there was so much change that he was not only proposing, advocating, but really executing on. And the city needed it. It was going in the wrong direction, and he really turned it around. So, I stayed on board until 1999 when he was running then for Senate against Hillary Clinton. And at that point, I wanted to try and do something different. So, I was appointed by the board of NYC & Company to be their president and CEO. So, I started that in October of ‘99.
Jenn: Wow, that’s incredible. Quite a ride. And so I want to now, from October 1999, take us to the day of 9/11, which I know is very difficult. Kalli and I are from New York. You’re from New York. As A New Yorker to say, like, take us back to that day. It’s, you know, it’s difficult.
Cristyne: Yeah. Well, I mean, it feels like just yesterday, even though it’s 25 years now, but sometimes it feels like a long time, but having lived through it, it sometimes feels like just yesterday.
Jenn: Absolutely. So, what was it, what was that day like for you as the CEO of New York City’s Tourism and Conventions Bureau. And when did you realize your role would be pivotal in rebuilding the city’s image? Bring us through that day for you.
Cristyne: Well, it’s interesting because I just shared my role with the mayor’s office and I found myself on the morning of 9/11 back downtown in City Hall Park before the attack because there was Tweed Courthouse, which now is, as you probably know, the Department of Education but Tweed Courthouse is behind City Hall. It’s all on the same campus. I was at Tweed Courthouse because we were awaiting the mayor to join us to sign an MOU to turn Tweed Courthouse into the Museum of the City of New York. Museum of the City of New York is up on 104th and 5th Avenue. I was on the board as the mayor’s appointee. So, we decided to have a meeting at Tweed to celebrate that this was going to be another outlet for the Museum of the City of New York. Well, it was under construction. The plans had already been put into effect, but they needed to have sort of a signing. When we, and it was a beautiful day, as you know, the windows were opened, but we felt a tremendous boom right on the building. And by the way, City Hall is only five blocks from the Trade Center. So, we just all looked at each other but just assumed it was a construction, maybe they dropped a heavy piece of equipment that shook the building. And then we started to hear a lot of rumbling outside, sirens and people, just the level of just the activity on the street outside to the point where one of the board members got up and closed the window. At that point, the foreman, the construction foreman came in and said, folks, I just want to give you a heads up that a plane hit one of the Trade Center towers. So, I’ll never forget Pete Hamill, the famous journalist. He was on the board of the Museum of the City of New York. He kind of looked around like, why am I sitting here? He jumped up and then I realized I better get up and see what’s going on. So, we left and as soon as we got outside the building and we can see the tower from there, I realized it wasn’t what I was hoping, which was like maybe a small private aircraft lost his way and hit the tower. And when we saw the gaping hole and the tremendous amount of flames coming out of the building, we realized that it was a super jet and this was no accident. So right away we knew what happened. I immediately went to City Hall because the mayor was supposed to come by our meeting, his police desk already obviously knew that he was no longer going to the Museum of City of New York and he was heading right down to the center. I spoke to one of his bodyguards. He was at a breakfast at the Peninsula and they said, please stay at City Hall and just man the phones. The mayor’s already getting calls from staff members or family of staff members wondering if they’re okay. So that’s what I did for the first hour. We watched, we didn’t even need to watch it on TV because when the second plane hit, the entire building shook again. And then there were only at that point a handful of us in the building because we had evacuated the building. There was there was a group of school kids there waiting to get a photo with the City Council President, Peter Vallone. And he, so we were instructed to make sure the kids get back on the bus quickly and get out of there. So, we had evacuated City Hall, but at that point, when the second plane hit, the City Hall police said, you have a choice. You can either stay here, but we’re going to have to put you in the bomb shelter, which I didn’t even know there was a bomb shelter at City Hall, or you should leave and head uptown. So, we decided to leave. I was with JD Dapper, who at the time was a WABC TV host. And at that point, the cloud that you’ve all seen on television just came rolling up Broadway. And I really thought that it was a nuclear attack. At that point, I couldn’t see that the tower fell and that’s what the debris was. And so, I held JD’s hand and I just, we prayed. And we realized once the debris fell on us that our skin wasn’t burning off, it was not a nuclear attack. But we realized it was the building. And he then ran towards the building and I exited, I don’t even know how I got over the fence at City Hall because City Hall was barricaded. But I do recall some people were streaming towards the back of City Hall and people were being helped to get over the fence. And then I walked up Broadway. Phones were out, so I couldn’t reach anybody. And I realized at that moment, these are the things that I was dressed for this board meeting and I was wearing 4-inch heels. So, after walking about 20 blocks in those heels a mile, I then took the shoes off and I started to walk in just my stockings. And then the stockings were ripped and I found a shoe store that was opened. So, I bought a pair of, or I tried to buy a pair of sneakers, but they would only take cash. So, then I had to get online at an ATM at a deli. And it was at that moment that I realized how much our lives could change because I was wondering how much money to take out. Do I take out enough money just for the, I think the sneakers were $60, or do I take out as much as I possibly could, which I ended up doing because you got this horrible feeling that this could be if electricity goes out, if, you know, we were already offline on the phones, we couldn’t reach anyone. So, it was a frightening thing. And obviously, the loss of lives, that was beginning to weigh on us because we were seeing the people running from lower Manhattan, and they were just soot-covered, and they had faces like zombies. It was just, that was my experience on September 11th, which just seeing those first responders rushing towards the building as we were rushing away from the building made me have an even greater appreciation for of the NYPD and the FDNY and all of the volunteer and ambulance services that were just rushing to help.
Kalli: Thank you for sharing that with us. I know I’m sure it’s probably not the easiest memory to revisit. And it was just definitely a heavy day that day. And even I was younger when it happened and not really understanding exactly what was going on, but feeling that weight of it. And like you said, it’s, now as an adult looking back, if I was in that situation, thinking how quickly everything could change and what to expect, do you need the, do you need to take money out? Like, your whole life. It’s the simple things that, we all take for granted every day and we’re very lucky to be able to do. But, at that time, we were not lucky and had to think of that, those things. So going from being so confident to have all these small things that you’re taking for granted, now on the other side of it, you have to rebuild that confidence, and especially to have people want to come to New York as a tourist destination, that’s definitely not easy. So, can you walk us through what those first steps of rebuilding that confidence in promoting New York City as a tourist destination was both for visitors and for locals like Jenn and myself who were very scarred by what happened.
Jenn: Yeah, I was gonna say locals too. I mean, just to kind of rebuild the confidence in navigating the city. If you’re living in Brooklyn, you know, feeling safe enough to go to Manhattan, to go back to Broadway shows, to do those things. So yes, for sure, people wanting to visit the city, but I think you’re right, Kalli, also just the people that already live there, living there day to day.
Cristyne: Yeah, it’s interesting because my office was at the time on 51st Street. So, I was walking from City Hall right up Broadway. So, when I got into Times Square, it was eerily quiet, if you can imagine. There was absolutely people just were not in Times Square for the first time.
Jenn: Was it like, because I remember being there during COVID and it being like, I’ve never seen anything like this before. Times Square does not go quiet. So, could you kind of compare those two dates?
Cristyne: Yeah, it was similar. And I was in and out of Times Square because my office is actually right near Times Square now. So even during COVID, I was in there a lot. But this was so eerie because not only was it empty, but I started to think about how are we going to get people to come back? And during my walk uptown, I realized, even I, myself, going through Times Square, I was starting to think, should I have taken a different route? Is this a target? Is this, and then I got to my office and one of the first orders of business was figuring out how to get our staff, making sure everybody was accounted for, how to get them home, and if we would be open the next day. This was before remote work, right? Nobody worked remotely. So luckily, in the tourism industry, so many people are on the road so often promoting New York City that everybody had cell phones. We did often just converse and have meetings by phone, but we made sure that we would have a meeting that evening just to regroup and what our next steps would be. And we realized that all the bridges and the tunnels were closed, but I did get a phone call from the mayor’s office saying that he wanted me and the head of Broadway, who at the time was Jed Bernstein to come to a meeting the very next morning, so on September 12th at 8 o’clock, to discuss how we would be opening up Broadway. So, Jed and I on our way down to that meeting, Jed said, “I don’t think we’re going to be able to open up for another week. I think it’s really risky. No one’s going to want to be in a theater. and it’s going to be hard to get people in, even the actors. Many of them live in the suburbs. How are they going to get over the bridges or the tunnels?” I said, “Well, let’s raise all that at the meeting.” So, the mayor assembled all of the leaders of New York City, you know, Con Ed, the New York Stock Exchange, the real estate bureau, the hotel industry, you know, and of course, NYC & Company was there with the Broadway League and when he asked us when we thought we could open and Jed said “possibly in a week,” the mayor said “well I want it open tomorrow” and he quoted Winston Churchill about during the bombardment of London how Winston Churchill kept the opera going because it was one thing for them to try to bomb and kill our people and our spirit, but we’re not going to let them kill our culture. And we need to be there and let the world know that we are open and that we are survivors. And Broadway is really the number one piece of New York City, right? It is first and foremost New York, created in New York, exported to other cities, but it really personifies New York City. So, we looked at each other and even when Jed said, “how are we going to get people in?” And he said, “you tell them to go on the air if they have a Broadway ticket, show the people at the tolls that they’re coming in, and I will make sure the message is clear that Broadway is open.” Then he said, then Dick Grasso was next to us, who was the head of the New York Stock Exchange. And he said, “Dick when are you going to open up the Stock Exchange?” So, he starts explaining, and then Rudy stops. He says, “Dick hold on a second. Cristyne, Jed, why are you still here? Don’t you have to get up to Broadway and tell everybody that they’re going to be open tomorrow and make plans to get in?” So of course, we hurried up to Broadway. We had a meeting at one of the Broadway theaters and we explained to the unions how important this was and the actors in the unions were concerned that they would be playing to empty houses. We told New Yorkers to come and as you mentioned, how do you get New York involved? Remember the lines for the blood banks were so full that they couldn’t take any more blood. New Yorkers wanted to do something, so we said to New Yorkers, “Come to a Broadway show. I know you may not feel festive, but this is your way of protesting. This is your way of showing that we are still strong and that we will survive.” So luckily, we had a very good turnout. The first night was very next day, so that was September 13th when Broadway reopened. We arranged to have elected officials, leaders, celebrities give a curtain speech and then organically after the show people stood up and sang held hands in saying, God Bless America, which still gives me chills today. But it was a show of force. Broadway played such a strong role in rebuilding New York City’s tourism. We took the show on the road. We took a Broadway troupe from city to city to say thank you for all the support that we were getting from all over the city, all over the country rather. And it was really one of the highlights if you will, or the silver lining of a very dark cloud after 9/11.
Jenn: That’s so beautiful. And yeah, at first glance, you think, oh, wow, reopening Broadway on the 13th, is that a good idea? Is that sensitive? But I completely understand it. And I think that it was such a great move to say no, we are New Yorkers. We are not going to be scared to live our lives. We are going to protest what’s happening here. And I think that that’s so incredible. And when it comes to crisis, like whether it’s a terrorist attack or war or pandemic, how as a PR professional and especially during something like 9/11, how did you balance the sensitivity to the tragedy, but also promoting, like you did with Broadway, promoting the need to bring back business and optimism. How were you able to balance that also with what you were going through? I mean, you’re immersed in the business side of what you needed to get done, but in the same token, you’re a New Yorker who has gone through one of the worst things that has ever happened in New York City, almost in the world, more or less. So how did you balance that, not only for yourself, but for the people that were leaning on you to kind of have the answers?
Cristyne: Well, I had a tremendous staff at NYC & Company, and I also was a newlywed. And my husband is not from New York. We met in South Carolina where he was a golf writer based there and on the tour. So, he moved to New York for me. And one of the other things I was thinking along that long walk uptown on 9/11 is, how is Nick going to handle this? Is he going to want to leave? So, when we met later on 9/11, in fact, he met me at my office because he couldn’t hear from me. He decided, he was walking the dog in Central Park when the attack happened. So, he tried to call me on the cell phone, couldn’t reach me. So, he actually just took the dog straight to 51st Street. So, when I walked up and finally after hours, I saw him and the dog, which was fantastic because we brought the dog into the office and everybody just needed a hug. They needed to pet Gabby. She’s a beautiful basset hound, or she was. But I said to Nick, look, I understand if you have misgivings, you sacrificed a lot to come to New York. And he said, “Are you kidding me? I love New York and I love it even more now because I’m not going to let those bastards tell me where I can live.” So that was his defiant moment of doubling down. And we’ve been in New York ever since and he loves it and we’ve raised three children here. So much for a kid from Kentucky and South Carolina. He’s a true blue New Yorker.
Jenn: I love that. That’s amazing.
Kalli: That’s really cool. And, you know, I kind of want to take a little bit of a step back because there is so much that goes into the bringing back that optimism, bringing back that want to be here and that sense of community. So how do you, how did you coordinate with the city leadership, specifically with the mayor’s office to make sure that all the messaging, whether from Broadway, from all these different things was unified because there’s so many different.
Cristyne: Well, the management style of Rudy Giuliani when he was mayor before September 11th was that he would have a morning meeting with his staff. Every morning at 8 o’clock, you had to either go to Gracie Mansion or to City Hall and the entire cabinet, well, his inner circle was there and then we would invite members of the cabinet and we would go around the room and they would talk about what is the message of the day. My job was to say what was happening in the news, what was in the papers. Remember, this was before you had the internet reading all the papers for you or AI and telling you what the news was going on. So, I had to get up every morning at 5:30, read all the papers, and then give a report at 8 AM. So, but the management style that he has is one of a really collaboration. So, after the days after 9/11, just as I mentioned on 9/12, we had that meeting. He then had a meeting every day, first at 8 AM, then at 12, and then at 6. And it rotated around. Eventually they took over one of the piers, the West Side piers, and he included also FEMA, federal agencies, the state agencies, the port authority. These are not necessarily, agencies that he controls, but he wanted them to have a seat at the table so that we could all be on the same page and make sure that all the help was coming to the city that we needed. So, you know, and tourism, had a very strong role because he knew that was going to be not only the economic engine that tourism is and so powerful and strong for any city, especially New York, but it was also the marketing of New York. It was going to be the advertisement, if you will, of how New York is doing. So, we needed to be out there on the air every night with things to do, how to get into New York, how do you navigate all the tourists that wanted to see Ground Zero, because that’s a little macabre, right? So, thankfully, David Rockwell, who is a, star-chitect, wonderful New Yorker, he came up with a plan of building a viewing platform so that it would make sure that all the tourists that were coming downtown, which you can’t really, you couldn’t control, they were coming from all different directions, we gave them a place to go so that they could pay their respects in a dignified way by building a pier that went right out towards Ground Zero. And it also kept them in a way that they would be off the street, so they wouldn’t be clogging traffic. And so that was something that, by just working with the community. Also, the restaurant community, that was a big part of our membership base at NYC & Company. And we had a tremendous network of restaurants in lower Manhattan. So, if you think of all of Keith McNally’s restaurants, if you think of Drew Nieperin’s restaurants with the Myriad restaurant group like Tribeca Grill and Monrochet and Nobu, these are all famous star chefs, right? Yet they came to NYC & Company and said, “We’re feeding the first responders, but we need to organize this. We need it to be done in a way.” So, they, through our offices, they came and created a plan. So then when the first responders had, they basically commanded a ferry, a sightseeing ferry that they used as this commissary, and a chef would take over for each week and then feed these first responders instead of, feeding them out of a can, which is what, look, the Red Cross is meaning, they mean well, but they were giving them sort of like army rations. And our chefs in New York said they deserve better. So then once that was under control, people like Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal, who created the Tribeca Film Festival out of 9/11, but they first came to us and said, the restaurants are really hurting in Lower Manhattan. People don’t want to go or they’re concerned going. So, we did a big restaurant promotion with them for Little Italy and for Chinatown. They created, as I mentioned, the Tribeca Film Festival. There was Restaurant Week that just expanded. There was Broadway Week. We did all of these promotions to try to bring, be a tourist in your own town. So, they were getting promotions. We were doing events and promotions for the tri-state area. So we had to go to the low hanging fruit. But then we also started to get a lot of requests from Italy and Canada that they wanted to bring plane full of people to come in to support New York. So, I found I was like schlepping to JFK to greet the first plane of international tourists, from Italy and just to welcome them. So, it became an international effort of, in a sense, like patriotic tourism for the Americans. And then, their love for New York and the US to support the US against terrorism by all these international cities and countries that wanted to bring their tourists. Japan, for example, we worked very closely with the Japanese tourism minister because they have in their culture that they shouldn’t encourage people to go to a place of mourning, it’s disrespectful. So, we enlisted Hideki Matsui, who was an all-star baseball player, and then he became our spokesperson to let the Japanese people know it’s okay to come to New York. Not only is it okay, it’s encouraging, and we need you. We need you to support New York. So, two or three trips back and forth to Japan. We signed that deal and Hideki was on commercials and it was just really wonderful. Everybody was there to help. We couldn’t have done it without the broad support of New Yorkers.
Jenn: New Yorkers are the best people. I might be biased, but.
Kalli: I mean, I think we’re okay.
Cristyne: And if you don’t, just, we’ll tell you we are.
Kalli: Yeah, exactly. We’ll tell you and we’ll tell you why you’re wrong.
Jenn: Exactly. And it’s funny, I love that you were just talking about that too, because that was going to be sort of my next question. The whole world was fixated on New York City, right? Like it wasn’t just this like tiny thing that happened in our city and we were the ones, I mean, the entire world, all eyes were on us. And so, managing sort of the global relations during such a sensitive and historic time, I love how you were able to kind of work with other countries that were happy to promote tourism, not just in New York City, but the US, right? Across the whole nation, people were seeing the effects of 9/11, just not New York City. So, is there anything else? I mean, I think you already touched on it, but anything else from a global perspective that we didn’t cover there? Because it’s really important to just really hone in on the fact that this became like a global campaign. This wasn’t just come visit New York City. This was come to the US.
Cristyne: Yeah, it was. And remember, it was also at the time of transition where Mayor Giuliani was leaving office and Mayor Bloomberg was coming in. And Mayor Bloomberg was so well known in the international business community. So, during the, before 9/11, we were trying to bring in big groups, big meetings. we secured the Republican National Convention to come in. We secured country music awards to bring, also to bring back the Grammy Awards. We had them under the Giuliani administration. But one meeting, which was so important to our recovery by international business tourists, business meeting members, was the World Economic Forum. We had tried for years to get Klaus Schwab to bring the World Economic Forum to New York City, to leave Davos, Switzerland. Well, one of my first phone calls after 9/11 was Klaus Schwab saying, I’m ready to bring the forum to New York. Can you handle it? So, I talked to Mayor Giuliani and he said, actually, since this is going to be in February, I won’t be in office. You need to go and see Mayor Bloomberg and talk to Mayor-elect Bloomberg. He was all for it, but he said, you need to talk to Ray Kelly, my incoming police commissioner, make sure he can handle it because this is just a whole different element. This meeting is all of the, basically the world billionaires, that come in a little town of Davos, Switzerland, and now they were coming to the Waldorf where we hosted the meeting. That meeting told the world that New York City was open for business and that we needed those titans or whether it was just any kind of convention to come in. So yes, we hosted the World Economic Forum. We also hosted the American Bus Association, which as you know, has a lower hotel room rate that is required. We hosted SETA, the school tourism youth organization. They have a very low price level, right? They’re on a discount. New York normally wouldn’t be able to host them. We did after 9/11 because we knew how important it was to rebuild the tourism industry. So, it shows you from all different sectors how everybody came together and they put New York City first.
Kalli: I think it’s extremely important that we were putting the city first and emotions were really incredibly high after the attack. What were some of the guiding principles that helped you make the decisions that you had to make when you have a grieving city and an emotional city looking to you for answers?
Cristyne: I had to deal with this with a couple of the Broadway actors like the day after, two days after. They were saying it’s just too taxing. They were in mourning. They couldn’t do it. And I reminded them that we’re all in mourning and this is our role, whether you are an entertainer or whether you are a communications director. If you are in a leadership position, it’s time to lead. And you can’t lead by cowering and licking your wounds. And you need to lead with your chin up and being strong and guiding people and telling them what they can do. And that’s what we did. And I think what I learned in my years working in City Hall is really watching Mayor Giuliani and his leadership style for seven years before that. gave me the basis of how to move forward. And we came up with new ideas every day. We brought in different sectors. It was through collaboration, but everybody was working together and it was really a time, in our darkest days, it was really our brightest moment because we all were on the same page. There was not this divisiveness that we are unfortunately experiencing in politics. didn’t matter what your background was, you knew that there was a job to do and that was to fix New York because it was by fixing New York, you were also strengthening the United States. So difficult memories, of course, but I hope now that we are recognizing the 25th year of that tragic day, we can also remember how together and united our city and our country was.
Jenn: Absolutely. And I think that this too, the tragic events that happened on 9/11 was truly a PR crisis in itself. Everything from managing reputation to messaging to the communications, it all comes down to PR. So, how do you think what happened on 9/11 changed the practice of PR?
Cristyne: You just have to be out there. You can’t, and you have to be out there immediately in a crisis. And I think I learned that early on when unfortunately, there was a TWA flight crash, TWA 800 went during Giuliani’s administration, and there was also a Swiss Air flight crash. You know, everybody perished. And it happened within months of each other. During TWA, the leadership of TWA did not even want to address the media. They didn’t want to address. Meanwhile, Giuliani and his team were at the airport ready to meet with the families. So, Giuliani invited President Clinton to come. And it was all over the media just explaining how we were with the families and with the victims. And they would get to the bottom of whatever happened in the crash, right? TWA never recovered from their slow response and not wanting to meet with the media and really wanting to hide. It is a textbook case on what not to do with PR. Swiss Air, on the other hand, they, I think, saw what happened. They were right there on the scene at JFK. They met with the families. They did everything that they could to explain to the media what happened. They kept the media informed. It was 2 examples on how to deal with the media. So, through a crisis, whether it’s 9/11, whether it’s a terrorism act of any sort, whether it’s a wildfire or whatever you’re facing, the elected leaders need to be in front of the media and explain. It gives calm to the public, but also people demand and expect and deserve answers. So that’s, I think, some of the lessons that we can learn from a PR situation.
Jenn: Well, you know what they say, the old saying goes, if you can make it here, you’ll make it anywhere. And thanks to you and your team’s efforts, New York is stronger than ever before. It was really such a pleasure to have you on today. And on behalf of the Big Apple, especially in light of 25 years since the 9/11 tragedy, thank you for all you’ve done for our incredible city.
Cristyne: Well, and thank you so much for remembering 9/11 and all of the work that went into rebuilding New York. And also, the memory of all those that we lost. We reflect and I just appreciate the spotlight that you’re giving them and New York City.
Jenn: Absolutely. Our pleasure and we are just so, thankful that you were able to share your story with us today. So, thank you again. And as always, a big shout out to our listeners. Thank you for tuning in and hope you enjoyed today’s conversation. Be sure to follow The Pollack Group on all social channels and reach out anytime to myself or Kalli at impressions@pollackgroup.com.
